Lights of Forgiveness
by dennisud
Summary: As a former Nerv member completes a prison sentence, there's someone there waiting for him he didn't expect! A one-shot in a series!


Disclaimers:  
  
Neon Genesis Evangelion and all related characters, concepts, etc., are property of ADVision and Gainax. I only wish they were mine. This is a one-shot story I've wanted to do, as there are few stories, which focus on the lesser characters in the Evangelion saga. This is my way to give them the spotlight that they don't usually get! Please read and review!  
  
Light of Forgiveness  
  
By dennisud  
  
Thanks for the pre-reading help Steve Vader, Exeter, Dark Angelus, and as always Datexan the Grammar man!  
  
" "= Spoken dialogue ' ' = Mental thoughts  
  
The sun seemed warmer and brighter to his aged eyes. But it could also be the fact that he was getting out of prison after eight years. Eight well deserved years in his mind. The guilt had fermented in his souls during that time. Kouzo had thought he'd share in the life sentences Gendo Ikari and the two remaining SEELE members had gotten when the tribunals had concluded after the aborted attempt at Third Impact had failed. But he seemed to have his own Guardian Angels keeping an eye on him.  
  
He had to thank Ritsuko and the children again.  
  
They had overturned both SEELE's and Gendo's scenarios through Ritsuko's and Rei's betrayal at Terminal Dogma, and Shinji showing up on time to save Asuka, and using their combined Sync training to obliterate the nine MP- Evas. Though Ms. Soryu wasn't too thrilled with Rei's involvement in the battle. He chuckled mentally at her reaction to Rei's infusion into her entry plug and their subsequent sync in battle. Rei's presence alone helped regenerate Unit-02 from the damage the MP-Evas had done. With Asuka equally injured Rei's company had saved her. Yet, without Shinji and Unit-01 they would have lost.  
  
'Thank you Yui, and Kyoko. We didn't deserve it ... but the children did!' The old man silently thanked them for their sacrifice. He'd only wished he could have done more.  
  
He certainly didn't regret serving his time though the illness he acquired had shortened that stay. Since he developed lung cancer, he was given parole so that it could be treated. Thus he expected an ambulance for the forty-five minute trip to the Tokyo-2 airport and his flight to the U.N. International Hospital in Chicago where the new experimental treatment for his type of cancer was. The team who had developed the treatment came from there. Moreover, they had many other patients to help as well. The lung cancer seemed to have developed in many Nerv survivors when it was found that cancer developed from the fumes the Bakelite gave off during the attempted assault by the JDSSF in the last battle of the Angel war. No one had used Bakalite outside of the Eva cages and there was a certain reaction to the paint used within the corridors, when the paint came in contact with the Bakalite, it then released toxic fumes. At first, it was dismissed as a minor nuisance. That is until most of the remaining command and maitinence teams and the pilots themselves all developed the cancer in varying degrees. Many were stricken, and it was thought that many might die; but only one died before treatment could reach him. Hyuga Matoko died in the arms of the one he loved as Misato cried for her friend and for the second chance lost for both of them. She became the administrator of the Hospital in charge of the research and treatment of those affected.  
  
After the funeral all remaining ex-Nerv personnel were tested and those who showed signs of the cancer were treated Of all those that had been treated, all so far have remained cancer free. Even the children who were also affected were treated and have been cancer free since then.  
  
Kouzo sighed at all those who suffered for what was perceived as how a minor glitch as the chemical makeup of a certain type of paint could have morphed into such a harmful gas. Yet he himself was affected. So even though the guilt was there and will always be there, he at least knew he would share in their pain and misery.  
  
He was so focused on what had happened before, he was abruptly jarred from his thoughts by that sun and it's brilliance as he was escorted out the front gates to the outside world.  
  
There, at the gate, he was surprised.  
  
As expected the ambulance was waiting for him, but what caused him to gasp was the fact that in addition to the two paramedics, there were two more people there. Two people that he thought he would never see again.  
  
Both had calm but warm looks on their faces as they gazed at him. He could feel a smile forming on his own. Yet why were they here? He had not seen Ritsuko Akagi and Maya Ibuki for almost seven of the eight years he had spent in prison, since the UN hearings on SEELE and Nerv, and the Angel War.  
  
He did receive weekly calls from the elder woman but never thought more of it than concern for a former comrade. Yet he remembered the growing care Ritsuko seemed to convey with each subsequent call. Then, He remembered their testimony at the U.N. hearings, and his trial. During the trial they both recounted the events of the aborted Third Impact and how he had helped both women survive.  
  
He remembered Ritsuko and the calm and clear recounting of her attempt to stop Gendo Ikari from using Rei Ayanami as the catalyst to start the Third Impact. Ritsuko retold her involvement and her motives. How she had had an illicit affair with the former Nerv Commander, the same as her mother before her. How she had grown to hate the First Child due to her parentage and Gendo's seeming care for her. How his heartless treatment of her love had alienated her and caused her to destroy the clones of the First Child. Her incarceration, and her only visitors were Gendo, Misato and then him. Kouzo wanted to make sure she was treated as well as could be. Dr. Akagi seemed to sense the caring of that, even through the depressed state she was in at the time. She found it was her only light in her darkness.  
  
Ritsuko also told the tribunal and his trial's jury of how Gendo had tried to shoot her when her attempt to destroy the Magi failed and was staring at his pistol pointed towards her. She told them of Project-E, the EVA's development, as well as the Instrumentality Project. Finally, she told them of Gendo's manipulation of her and her mother to serve his purposes. How he and used everyone to his own ends and how this caused her to act.  
  
Then she recounted the events that unfolded in Terminal Dogma.  
  
Ritsuko saw the shots coming towards her as she remembered the cold and calculating stare of her former lover. She shouted in surprise as an orange hexagonal field abruptly appeared before her as the bullets meant for her head and chest were stopped in mid-air, and then dropped with audible clicks on the concrete floor. She turned to find Rei had moved from next to Gendo, to her own side in what seemed like an instant.  
  
Then before Gendo could say or do anything, a Section-02 security squad appeared behind the now startled and confused Commander. Kouzo had known that Ikari would dispose of any obstacles to his plans, which he knew included everyone at Nerv, and now especially Ritsuko, so he had sent a team go down to stop the Commander and secure Ritsuko's and with that Rei's safety.  
  
Then he remembered Maya's emotional testimony of how they faired during the JDSSF's attack on the Command Center. Her fright at the dark situation and later her protection by Kouzo and Shigreu as the Japanese Defense forces were finally called back and retreated from the Nerv Base they had so obviously trashed. Their Commanders were later jailed for their order to leave not one alive, while feigning that they were just following orders. SEELE was eventually credited with the no survivors order. Her final testimony was of how Kouzo had visited her and allowed her to vent her anger and sense of betrayal to him. He had been there as a friend for her and she thanked him openly in court for his efforts. Her smile softened the eventual guilty verdict. As well as the sentence handed down by the judge.  
  
Maya then described the caring way Kouzo comforted her as well as she cried on his shoulder during the crisis while Aoba and Hyuga re-established contact with the outside world specifically the U.N. The old man then remembered the kind and warm way Maya embraced him when they were told of what had happened in Terminal Dogma. Maya, for her Sempai's safety, Kouzo for the satisfaction that he had prevented Third Impact and thwarted Gendo's and SEELE's plans.  
  
All these thoughts seemed to pass in his mind within a few seconds. He seemed to zone out until he heard one of them, Ritsuko say something to him. As she stood there arms akimbo she asked, "Well Professor, are you now finished with your sabbatical?" A rye smile was on her face.  
  
Kouzo nodded and smiled back at his former colleague, "You could say that Doctor, and why are you here with your fine assistant?" He gestured towards Maya. "Surely I can't be that important for you two to be here wanting to meet me?"  
  
"Oh, but you are Kouzo..." Ritsuko said voice quivering slightly.  
  
"... To both of us." Maya finished. The looks both of them conveyed to him were obvious. They did care for him in more than a colleague sort of way.  
  
'They came here ... for me?' The old man thought. He took a few tentative steps to them as they did the same; they met in the middle of the vacant road in front of the prison that was his home for the last eight years.  
  
"Why... how can I have been so important to you two?" He asked with a bewildered look.  
  
Both women looked at each other and then with a nod in unison stepped up to the aged-man and gave him a small peck one on each cheek. They then shared a small laugh at the even more confused look on the elder mans face. When nothing seemed to be coming from him, they both took one arm and gently walked him to the waiting ambulance for the ride to the airport.  
  
It took a few more moments until the three of them were settled, but it was not until the ambulance was moving that he finally spoke up. "You two still didn't answer me?"  
  
Maya finally spoke up her eyes conveying as much or more than what she said. "Sempai, we both owe you so much, not just our lives, but our futures as well."  
  
He turned to the older woman. "Ritsuko, what does she mean your futures?"  
  
Ritsuko smiled at his question then answered him with what he could see aSs a happy glint in her eyes that he hadn't remembered seeing when they both worked for Nerv. Though thinking back to their few meetings face to face after the attack, he did remember that glowing look though it was never this intense.  
  
"She means if you hadn't done what you did in those desperate minutes during that final battle ... of that God forsaken war, we wouldn't be here talking. You saved us Professor, you gave both of us a chance to have a life to live and a chance to find a love, a real love as well."  
  
Kouzo Fuyutski was confused even more than before. How could his actions make such a difference to these two? All he did was to do the right thing and nothing more. Yet these two women seemed to have given him credit for what they had done since then. He shook his head; "I'm not responsible for what you've both achieved since the war."  
  
"But Sir, if you didn't do what you did back then, we wouldn't have been here now." Maya sighed then took his aged hand in both of hers, "I have a husband and a daughter, which wouldn't have been here, were it not to you."  
  
Before he could answer, a hand pulled his gaze away from the former Nerv Tech to the former head of Project-E. Ritsuko Akagi then gave him a look that also conveyed much to him.  
  
She answered the unspoken question. "I wanted to die then, take him and all of us with me. Then Rei did what I thought unthinkable, saving me from my dark fate, saving my life, which I had deemed worthless, and in that moment made me see that it wasn't. Then the men you sent subdued Gendo and took us all to safety. They wouldn't have been there as an added safeguard if things had gone down a different road." She took his other hand. "Kouzo ... you save me, my body, and my soul. For that I am deeply grateful."  
  
Ritsuko, who was sitting in the back if the moving ambulance next to Kouzo, with Maya on the other side, snaked an arm around the older mans waist and laid her head on his shoulder as he finally registered what she was doing.  
  
"Why?" He looked at her intently.  
  
"Because you deserve it, you above all others involved have lost as much or more and we who are left should have a chance at ... being happy." She was now crying with a quivering smile on her face. "All of us Kouzo, that includes you."  
  
He had to think about this. He did what he thought was right and they had survived. While he paid his debt, they had new lives thanks to him. He took Ritsuko in his arms and patted her on the back; she simply tightened her hold while Maya squeezed his arm conveying her feelings on the subject as well.  
  
A few hours later:  
  
Flying over the Pacific on a U.N. Jet transport, Kouzo Fuyutski was on his way to his treatment for his cancer while snuggled up to him in the next seat was Ritsuko Akagi. Maya had met her husband, Shigreu Aoba at the airport. He also took a bit of time to thank his former boss until their flight was due to leave. He found out that Ritsuko had been the lead scientist in the fight against this form of Cancer as Bakalite was found to be its cause. Bakelite was used in all Nerv facilities and as the years went by this particular strain of Lung Cancer appeared in over 50% of former Nerv Personnel, worldwide.  
  
Ritsuko took it upon herself to head the research team in fighting this. So naturally, when she heard that Kouzo was stricken she had to act. Her argument on his health was one of several calls to release him. The others were from the former Children who felt they owed him as well.  
  
Rei, Asuka, and Shinji had all moved in together and shared an apartment while attending Tokyo-2 University. They had been together since their treatments for lung cancer had appeared in each of them. Asuka was still as boisterous as before but now much more tolerant of Rei who through her interactions with them and others began to grow and interact with others better. Not surprisingly, Shinji seemed to be the catalyst of their fights and of their reconciliation's.  
  
Though Ritsuko told him that there was no romance between Shinji and either girl, he knew something would happen soon and he would try to be there for them as they were for him. He was glad they had been getting along and seemed to be headed to better lives than what they had before. Nevertheless, he was surprised that all three could stay under the same roof. Maybe their shared experienced might have been a factor. Course, Shinji might have been the main factor! He chuckled inwardly as he thought how that situation might turn out. 'Shinji I will pray for you.'  
  
As Kouzo learned more, he was astounded at not just Ritsuko's efforts, but those of the former Nerv employees. It seemed that as alone as he thought he was in prison, others did care for him. The Children, Maya and Shigreu, and of course Ritsuko.  
  
The old Professor turned to the sleeping form next to him. Kouzo knew she was the main force behind his release, yet it seemed he had been more important to her than even he had thought. The former Sub-Commander smiled the smile of a man rejuvenated. He knew he could fight his cancer with the treatment and care she seemed to want to give. The old man also knew he'd need her help in adjusting to a new free life. But it seemed he had friends close and far away to help him now.  
  
With great care, he adjusted the seats pulling back the armrest, tucking Ritsuko onto his lap and wrapping her in his warm embrace. Kouzo wanted her to know her caring for him was now going to be given back with equal measure... if not more from now on.  
  
A/N: There simply aren't enough stories concerning the secondary cast. This IMHO stinks! This is my attempt to add more to the mix and encourage others to do the same!  
  
dennisud 


End file.
